Pages

Monday, December 24, 2012

Ron Paul on the security state

Ron Paul joins the voices being raised against the security state and the use of fear to justify suppression of rights in the name of "safety."

...School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.

Do we really believe government can provide total security? Do we want to involuntarily commit every disaffected, disturbed, or alienated person who fantasizes about violence? Or can we accept that liberty is more important than the illusion of state-provided security? Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. We shouldn’t settle for substituting one type of violence for another. Government role is to protect liberty, not to pursue unobtainable safety.

Furthermore, do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and warrantless physical searches? We see this culture in our airports: witness the shabby spectacle of once proud, happy Americans shuffling through long lines while uniformed TSA agents bark orders. This is the world of government provided "security," a world far too many Americans now seem to accept or even endorse. School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.

Here's were the reasoning goes off the rails. The rationale for the security state and the surveillance state is combatting terrorism by waging a "global war on terror," not preventing school shootings or domestic crime, even the "war on drugs."

OK, Dr. Paul is objecting to the NRA plan to increase security here, but we already have a massive intrusion of government into civil liberties based on "terrorists." Then we learn that domestic security was monitoring Occupy protests closely to identify potential terrorists. This is the outrage that lovers of liberty need to be raising out voices in unison over.

The rationale for the security state and the surveillance state is combatting terrorism by waging a "global war on terror," not preventing school shootings or domestic crime, even the "war on drugs."

Right, Tom, the "war on drugs" was largely instituted to keep the black and brown populations under pressure and out of the job market and out of power. Once the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act had been passed there was no more de jure discrimination so the PTB at the time started the war on drugs to target the non-white underclass and keep them "in their place". No real difference from the propaganda used back in the 30's with marijuana. It was also a way to justify increased hiring and arming of local law enforcement and increased federal control of the locals through the use of multi-agency task forces.

Right, now TPTB have realized that the rest of the population is getting crammed down to "the lower classes" and the are ramping up "security" to protect themselves, their property, and their privilege. Welcome to the new aristocracy of neo-feudalism aka institutional fascism (v. leader fascism).